


Get Well Soon!

by BasicBathsheba



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, M/M, SIMON IS SICK, Simon is also a blind idiot, Watford Seventh Year, baz thinks he's dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 04:32:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14097288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicBathsheba/pseuds/BasicBathsheba
Summary: Baz comes back to Watford early from Christmas holiday, and finds Simon ill. In the process, he discovers Simon’s hidden secret.





	Get Well Soon!

**Baz**

Simon has vomited all over the room.

I smell it when I’m in the stairway, and by the time I hit the door it’s almost overwhelming. I don’t want to open it. I don’t want to see this. I don’t want to smell this.

But I charge in anyway.

I don’t see him at first, but I see the remnants of him — clothes strewn everywhere, edging toward my side of the room. And the sick. I see the sick.

It’s splattered on the floor next to the bed, and again at the foot of mine, leading to the bathroom, and that’s where I see him, collapsed on the bathroom floor, the door wide open, his face shoved into the toilet while his arms cradle his head. 

He’s lost his shirt — he never sleeps in one, it’s the most ridiculous thing, but I’ve given up fighting him about it — and I see the tawny muscles on his back ripple a bit as a convulsion runs through him and he heaves into the toilet.

“Snow,” I say carefully. For once I don’t want to scare him. He looks miserable enough.

My attempt at a soothing tone fails, apparently, because he looks up from the toilet with terror and despair in his eyes.

“Baz,” he gasps. His voice is small. “What are-“ he pauses, puts his hand to his mouth like he’s about to vomit again, “doing back so soon?”

“I could ask you the same,” I say, stepping carefully toward the bathroom. I drop my bag on my bed and pull out my wand and  **out, out, damn spot!**  the piles of sick, because I truly can’t stand to smell them any longer.

He leans forward to heave again. Nothing is coming up, which I suppose is good, but his body won’t stop spasming in an attempt to rid itself of every last drop of sustenance. It’s painful to watch.

“What creature poisoned you this time?” I ask so that I won’t move toward him and brush aside the sweat soaked curls that are plastered to his face.

“I don’t know,” he says between heavy breaths. He sits back from the toilet and leans against the wall, hugging his knees up to his chest. 

“Where’s Wellbelove?” She’s his girlfriend. She should be here, picking up sick and holding his hair. But Snow just shrugs.

“At home, I suppose.” His head tilts back to hit the wall and his Adam’s Apple juts out outrageously. I can’t keep watching this. It’s pathetic.

“Alright, Snow, up you go,” I say, striding into the bathroom. He stares up at me, terrified, but he’s too weak to move or fight back in case I attack. 

But instead I stoop down, avoiding looking in the toilet, scoop an arm under his armpit, and haul him up so he’s standing. He’s trembling against me, and I don’t know if it’s from fear or illness.

We stumble awkwardly back into the room and toward his bed, where he slides down onto it and hunches himself into a ball. 

Whatever has gotten to him is frightfully efficient. There are bags under his eyes and he looks haggard, and a small terror runs through me as I realise I know nothing about magical diseases or poisons or venoms.

 **Get well soon!**  I cast, but it does nothing. I fire off three more healing spells, but he’s still groaning and shivering.

“Why are you helping me?” he says through clenched teeth.

“Because I’m supposed to kill you, and I won’t be upstaged by letting you puke yourself to death,” I snap back. It’s not true. It’s because I can’t stand to see him like this.

The healing spells bounce off of him, and I curse.

“Crowley, Snow, do you really have no idea what poisoned you? Did anything bite you? Did Wellbelove see?”

I don’t want to call her, especially over Christmas holiday, but if something attacked Snow, she might know. He always spends the holiday playing house with her; they’re practically inseparable. 

“Wasn’t with Aggie,” he mumbles. I pause. This is an intriguing development.

“Why?” I ask, but Snow’s not going to answer. I can see the convulsion coming and I dive for the waste bin and shove it toward him just as he turns and vomits into it. 

“This is a new low, even for you,” I mutter. I’m still holding the bin with his sick, while he heaves and gasps and shudders over it.

“Food,” he spits out. Of fucking course. He’s in the process of dying, and Snow wants food. He probably wants to leave this earth with four scones jammed in his mouth.

Oh, Crowley. Is he actually dying? 

I straighten up. Is this the end of Simon Snow? Is this how he’ll go? Wither away in our room while I stand by, helpless, desperate to intercede but unable to?

I mutter another healing spell and set the bin down. I can’t help it; my hand moves to his back. I pat it gently as he continues to heave over the side of the bed. He’s covered in sweat, and he’s burning up, but I can’t tell if it’s his fever or his natural temperature. I’ve never touched his bare back before.

“Food,” he says again, then stops. He takes a shuddering breath. Great snakes, don’t tell me his last words are going to be “food.” It’s fitting, don’t get me wrong. But I want him to die with my name on his lips. That’s always been the plan. 

“Food…” he starts again, then, “poisoning. Food poisoning.”

I immediately pull my hand back.

“Food poisoning? You poisoned yourself? No wonder my spells wouldn’t work, there’s no cure for being a fucking numpty,” I snap. I leave him to his bin and storm off toward the bathroom, ashamed of myself for being so worried for him, hating myself for being soft, even for a moment.

The bathroom is a nightmare, so I spell it clean and then wash down the toilet by hand, because I don’t trust magickal antiseptic. I don’t think vampires can get sick, but I don’t like the idea of Snow’s microbes hanging around, the spirit of past scones haunting my shower.

When that’s done I change and prepare myself for bed. I had intended to come back to the room and collapse. It was late, and it never occurred to me that Snow would be back from break so early. I had been looking forward to the silence, the time without him in our room. 

I curse myself as I fill a glass of water and rummage under the sink for an extra towel, then go out to the room.

I place both items on the table between our beds, magick away the sick in the bin, and then get in my bed, my back facing Snow, and pretend I’m going to sleep.

I assume Snow is passed out. I can hear the sputtering breaths that normally indicate he’s sleeping, so when he speaks, it sends a jolt of surprise through me.

“Thanks, Baz.” 

**Simon**

This feels worse than the chimera. 

There’s something inside me, clawing at me, struggling to get out, but it’s not my magic. 

It was bad enough being stuck here, alone, at Christmas. Agatha had uninvited me since we broke up, and I think she had lied to her family about it, and Penny never really asked because I think she assumed, and I didn’t want to put her in an uncomfortable position, so I just didn’t mention it, and instead I spent my first Christmas alone at Watford since I was a first year. 

It felt weird. That first year was magical. I had Ebb, and the Mage even stuck around, and on Christmas I ate in the main hall with Miss Possibelf. I was still recovering from a were bite though, which is why I think the Mage was around; to keep an eye on me if I turned.

But this year I’m not an eleven year old on the verge of lycanthropy. I’m a seventh year going through an awkward break up, and so no one stays.

I don’t think anyone realised I was staying, and so the food just…dried up.

I’ve stored enough away that it wasn’t a huge issue, but by Christmas Day I was fucking starving, so I spelled my way into the kitchen (I’m going to owe Watford a new door) and helped myself to the left over roast and butty fixings. It was genius. It was perfect. I ate out on the lawn, then I checked in on Ebb’s goats since she always leaves for the actual holiday, and then I settled in at Mummers house to watch TV on Penny’s illegally spelled laptop.

And then I woke up and realised I was dying.

I don’t remember much between the initial charge and when Baz showed up. 

Why the fuck was he there? It was Christmas night. No one should have been there.

I thought I was done for. I thought it was going to end right there, on the fucking bathroom floor.

But apparently Baz is so fixated on his plan to kill me in some fiery death that he took pity on me.

It was weird as fuck. But I’m really fucking glad he did.

He’s gone when I wake up, and I thank Merlin for small miracles. Every inch of me hurts.

I pull myself out of bed and blink my way toward the bathroom. Everything is blurry, and I can’t see. It’s always this way in the mornings, before I manage to get into the bathroom and pull my contact case from where I hide it behind a loose brick.

I started hiding the contact lenses in our third year. Someone at one of the homes kept complaining about my clumsiness, and next thing I knew, I was kitted out with a pair of state funded spectacles. They were huge, and awful, and exactly what you would think a pair of state funded specs would be, and I knew immediately I couldn’t wear them at Watford.

By then Baz and my’s animosity had settled pretty definitively into a feud, and I refused to let him find a weakness. Imagine if he knew I couldn’t fucking see?

Penny solved it, as always. She got sick of watching me bang into things when she knew there was no reason for it other than my stubborn refusal to wear my glasses. Set me up with contacts, helped me figure out how to convert that useless leprechaun gold into something worthwhile, and sent me on my way.

But I had to hide it from Baz. Thus, the loose brick.

I close the door before crouching down and pulling out the bag that holds my glasses and contacts. I wear the specs sometimes during the summer, but I’ve never put them on whilst at Watford. 

But I can’t bring myself to put on the contacts this morning. It feels like every drop of moisture has been wrung from my body, and if I attempt to put the lenses in my eye I think they will bleed. So specs it is. 

I’ll take them off the second I see Baz. He’ll never know. And I’ll just bump around blind if I have to.

When I’m done, I poke my head out, peek around the room to confirm he’s gone, then beeline to my bed. Crowley, it feels good. I slide the specs onto my face hesitantly, then sigh. They look like a charity shop nightmare, but it feels good to see. 

I ease Penny’s laptop on to my bed and hunt down  _Doctor Who_. Just because I’m not with Agatha doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the tradition. I’ll have to close it when Baz gets back, but it’s already pretty late, and he’s not here, so he might be gone for the day. Or maybe He was never here at all and I just dreamt him.

I’m so absorbed in the show and my growing headache that I don’t hear the door open, don’t hear his stupid silent vampire footsteps until he’s closing the door behind him with a snap.

I look up, a complete deer in the headlights as he just stares at me. I can see the ghost of a smile working its way up his face and I know his first words are going to be something atrocious. I think about pulling the specs off, hiding them under the blankets, but I’m tired. And he’s already seen them. So what? He put his hand on me as I vomited beef last night. Him seeing my specs is not the weirdest thing to happen.

“Why are you back early?” I practically shout.

“Why are you?” he snaps back. He drops his bag onto his bed and I see his clothes for the first time. They’re his practice clothes; he’s been at the pitch, and he looks flushed from the cold.

“I didn’t leave,” I retort. I pause the show. 

“You didn’t go play happy family with Wellbelove?” he asks. He’s not looking at me as he unlaces one of his shoes. I just shrug.

“No. We broke up. It seemed weird.”

He doesn’t answer, just pulls off the other shoe.

“Why are you back?” I push again.

“I fought with my father,” he answers sharply, then turns away toward his wardrobe.

“About what?”

Sometimes when Baz acts human — it’s rare, but it happens — I just like to push him as far as I can, to see how much he’ll tell me, to see how long it takes for him to say fuck the anathema and charge toward me to tear my head off.

“About you, of course,” he snaps back. That shuts me up. “Everything revolves around you, didn’t you know, Chosen One?”

Oh. So he’s fucking with me.

“What’s with the glasses? Did you steal them from my grandfather?”

“I didn’t want to put in my contacts,” I mumble. He tilts his head to the side.

“Why wear lenses?”

I huff. I don’t tell him it’s because of him.

“Can’t bloody well be the Chosen One if you’re wearing specs, can you?” I snap. He looks like he’s going to say something, going to call me out, but he just shakes his head, reaches inside his bag, and pulls out a wrapped sandwich. He tosses it to me and I flinch away from it instinctively.

“If you ever tell anyone about the lenses, I’ll tell everyone you’re a vampire,” I say. “And I’ll kill you.”

He laughs. Baz actually laughs as he grabs his towel and heads into the bathroom. 

“Tell anyone I brought you food and I’ll tell everyone about the lenses. And I’ll kill you,” he echos back. I stare at the sandwich. I am fucking starving.

“Yeah, alright then,” I say, reaching for the food. “We’re never going to talk about this again, right?”

“Obviously,” he snaps, then slams the door behind him.

I take a bite of the sandwich. It’s fucking delicious. I finish it off while he showers, then press play on  _Doctor Who_  again. 

I’m not going to miss out on this, just because Baz is here. If it bothers him so much, he can leave.

I expect him to, but he doesn’t. Just sits at his desk and reads quietly. He only makes one shitty comment the entire time.

It’s actually kind of nice. Like a Christmas ceasefire. I could almost get used to this.

 

 


End file.
